Lesson 2 · ~15 minutes · needs your cube

Cross on the Bottom

Whatever your old method was, it started with a cross — probably built on top, staring at it. Speedcubers build it on the bottom, plan it before the first turn, and never look at it again. This single habit change is the highest-leverage upgrade available to a returning solver.

Why the bottom

Three compounding reasons, in order of importance:

  1. No rotation tax. Cross on top means flipping the cube over before the next stage — a re-grip and a re-orientation every solve. Cross on bottom flows straight into F2L.
  2. Your eyes point where the work is. After the cross, all remaining action is in the top two layers — exactly where you're already looking. The solved cross needs no supervision; centers can't move, so it can't silently break.
  3. It force-trains lookahead. Building what you can't fully see makes you track pieces mentally instead of visually — the exact skill (see lookahead) that separates sub-60 from 1:30.

Two facts that make planning realistic: every scramble's cross is solvable in 8 moves or fewer, and WCA gives you 15 seconds of inspection before the timer starts — enough, with practice, to plan the entire cross. (Method context: J Perm's CFOP overview.)

What "correct" means

A cross edge is home only when both stickers agree: white on the bottom, and its side sticker matching the adjacent center. A white "plus" with mismatched sides is a fake cross — you'd pay for it two stages later. The check takes one glance at the equator: four unbroken color columns.

Hands-on: the three-level drill

Level 1 — bottom-build (do today)

Scramble. Hold white down and keep it down — no flipping the cube to peek. Solve the cross using the top and sides of pieces you can see, tilting slightly at most. Verify with the equator glance. Repeat 3–4 times; it will feel awkward for exactly one session.

Level 2 — plan-then-run (this week)

Before touching the cube, study the scramble and plan the first 2–3 cross moves. Execute them without pausing, then finish reactively. Untimed.

Level 3 — full plan (the goal, weeks out)

Plan all cross moves during a 15-second look, then execute the whole cross without a single pause. When this lands, you're inspecting like a competitor.

Feedback loop: the equator glance after every attempt. Four aligned columns = pass. A mismatched column = you placed an edge by white sticker alone; find which one and fix it before re-scrambling, so the correction gets practiced too.

Check yourself

Homework (before next session)

  1. Level 1 drill, 3–4 crosses per day — fits inside your 15 minutes with room to spare. White stays down.
  2. Still owed from Lesson 1: the diagnostic solve report (where did you stall?) and the cube order. Lesson 3 is blocked on the diagnostic — it decides whether we rebuild your last layer or your F2L first.

Report back — start your next session with this

Check items off as you complete them (they persist between visits), then tell your teacher:

Primary source

J Perm's CFOP overview — five minutes situates the cross inside the full method you're rebuilding toward.

Questions — a cross that won't come together in 8 moves, whether to always use white? Ask your teacher. · Course home · Notation · Glossary · Lesson 1